Ibibo is marketing very aggressively in India. First it was "Great Indian Blogger hunt" than Ibibo banners all around the place on internet and now the balti ads on TV. This shows Ibibo is investing alot(millions of $) in brand building, and hopes to make money from ads later (they need another Bakra :P) Well considering growing internet users in India brand name will mean alot in future, but does this call for heavy investments on TVs. Most of successful web products happened to go viral either without any marketing or little internet marketing. But the TV marketing seems to be working out for ibibo at this time. They claimed 1 million users recently, but is it the truth?Some interesting numbers here from Ibibo home page (See image on right):
1,192,799 (1.19 million) Friends:
Is friends same as unique users ? Say if A is friend of B and C then user A will be counted twice,
In which case I doubt if they have 1 million users. Also after registering with Ibibo, if you start looking for friends it shows 744415 (0.74 million) as interesting people(I dont think ibibo will not show an user as interesting :)). I assume it as their actual user count and not 1 million.
4,076,608 (4.07million) Blogs:
Which means 4 blogs per each of the Ibibo users !!! Are you talking about blogs or is it the (blog) posts?
Hope Ibibo will now not be a Balti and will give the correct numbers. Also Ibibo, I dont think you are planning to get acquired or infact no Indian company may afford to buy you so if the numbers are wrong that may anyways not be of much use :).
I feel that the stats given by them are fictitious. I did the following analysis:
ReplyDeleteAt 7:00pm on 1st Feb 2008 on the ibibo home page, I found the following:
No of ques: 284,125
So, I went in and browsed the recent questions. I only looked at the travel category. In the reverse chronological order, the open questions were asked at the following times:
6:24pm
3:39pm
2:48pm
2:39pm
9:32pm jan 31
5:32pm jan 31
3:46pm jan 31
2:58pm jan 31
2:45pm jan 31
2:23pm jan 31
1:38pm jan 31
11:39am jan 31
10:42am jan 31
6:35am jan 31
5:22am jan 31
1:29am jan 31
.. followed by entries of jan 30.
Thus, in all, there were 12 open questions on jan 31. In the closed questions category, according to the most recent details, the last close question was answered on jan 25.
Lets say, there are 15 questions asked each day (some of which are answered), and there are 100 categories. Then, in a day, there will be 1500 questions asked. To reach 284125, they would need approximately 189 days. To add to this, I don't think the activity on their website was this 'high' right from day one. I started seeing ads for Ibibo since the last 15-20 days.
I am not going to conclude this comment. I'll leave it for others to interpret :).
naa "ibibo" that brand is so confusing to spell~~~brands should be as simple as google or orkut~~and tv spends on advertising is very costly indeed
ReplyDeleteIbibo sux to the core
ReplyDeleteHaha...you all fret and fume, while ibibo walks off with many Indian internet users, like a pied piper! Lage raho...
ReplyDeleteJust 902 photos uploaded in last 4 days, Now I seriously doubt this numbers. Either the numbers are cooked up or ibibo Photos is slowly dying. Ibibo, dont be a balti, speak up on blogs
ReplyDeleteAgree with you.
ReplyDeleteThe very first assignment put up by Ibibo itself gives us a indepth sight....
They are on a blogger hunt which made many users open blogs,write something and earn points for that....
MAny users took it up writing nothing but useless things etc.,.
They knew the users were spamming but couldn't stop or even wouldn't stop it,since that is what they needed -publicity....